Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Remembering Dorothy I. Height…

Height was a key figure within the Civil Rights movement…a champion for voting rights, school desegregation, equal opportunity to employment and for fair and decent housing.

Dorothy Height went to the front…not so that she would get noticed or credit for being there, but to do work.

One can truly say that there was an America before Ms. Height and there is an America after...we are far from perfect, but it serves us well to look back at what was to better understand what is so we can get to work on what needs to be.

When there was a protest, Dorothy Height participated.

When someone needed to be lobbied, Dorothy Height got her lobby on.

When President Eisenhower failed to act on school desegregation, Dorothy Height took him to task.

When Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of his dream, Dorothy Height was there…

…and when four families buried their daughters in Birmingham, murdered by a church bomb just weeks after the March on Washington, Dorothy Height was there too.

Dorothy Height was a social justice warrior who leaves a legacy of action and participation.

Ms. Height was known to say that we must learn to take our task more seriously and ourselves more lightly.

She lived a life to remember...she was a leader who led by example…and she was a woman who went to the front, not to get noticed but to do work.

The history of the Civil Rights Movement has been short-changed - (white) people forget that there was indeed a Civil Rights Movement before MLK, Jr.. The role of women in the CRM has also been forgotten by most.